Artist: Steven Wilson
Album: Insurgentes
Year of Production: 2008
Genre: Alternative
Country of Origin: United Kingdom

Insurgentes is not really an album of songs, of music. It is more the representation of the mind of its composer, Steven Wilson. This representation is given to the listener by the music of course, but it is a completely different kind of music, of impressions given by this music, of feelings brought by this music than the ones we are used to experience with more conventional albums (and there, most of the progressive rock bands can be classified as conventional compared to Steven Wilson). The album is between two genres. It is songs, but it is also a work of sound design.

In this album, Steven Wilson is accompanied by Tony Levin, a renown bassist who played with Peter Gabriel, John Lennon, Paul Simon, King Crimson and a lot of others bands. He is part of around 500 albums. Steven Wilson is also accompanied by Jordan Rudess, the keyboardist of the progressive rock band Dream Theater, Gavin Harrison, the drummer of Porcupine Tree, one of the other bands of Steven Wilson and six other guests. All those great musicians have helped Steven Wilson to create his first solo album. The album has been produced by Steven Wilson, like most of the album of his different bands.

The album seems to be constructed in a way meant to accompany the listener slowly into the strange and crazy world represented by the central track, “No twilight within the courts of the sun”, and then to bring him back from this world. All the album present a world of melancholy, of destruction, of unexpectedness and of violence, as a strange and dark wonderland (this is how I feel the music). “No twilight within the courts of the sun” has nearly driven me crazy the first time I’ve listened to it. An impression of pressure is brought at the beginning by the increasing intensity of the guitar unstructured playing. This pressure grows fallowing the intensity of the guitar. At its peak, the accompaniment of bass and drum is reinforced by saturated guitar. Then an impression of emptiness, of collapsing take the listener as every guitars disappear. Steven Wilson plays with those impression of pressure and collapsing during all the song, ending it, as it seems the first time, by an disorganised sounds fading out slowly. When the listener feels relieved from this world created around him by this song, an explosion of saturation, guitars, drum and bass overwhelms him to bring the final touch of this strange world.
After this song, the listener is slowly taken out of this violence and craziness during the end of the album, finishing by a magnificent slow song of voice and piano and 17-string bass koto.

The deluxe edition contains a bonus album. This album is less gentle with the listener, as it brings him directly into the world depicted by “No Twilight within the courts of the sun”, with more darkness and more suffering.

Insurgentes shows and enhance perfectly the ingenuity and the originality we find in the others creations of Steven Wilson, as the different albums of Porcupine Tree, No Man, and his other bands.

Resources:

Steven Wilson website: http://www.swhq.co.uk/index.cfm
Insurgentes website: http://www.kscopemusic.com/stevenwilson/insurgentes/